


Of Those Who Walk Behind The Stars

by i_amthatis



Category: Hat Films - Fandom, The Yogscast
Genre: Alternate Universe - Space, Dead People, Gore, In which the author has had a lot of feelings about robots and humans and ethics, Multi, Other, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Rating May Change, Robot/Human Relationships, Space AU, Space Pirates
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-16
Updated: 2019-06-16
Packaged: 2020-05-12 15:06:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,771
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19231564
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/i_amthatis/pseuds/i_amthatis
Summary: There was bound to be a lot of tech on the Battleship, things he could use to update his own little skimmer. Weapons and munitions, and maybe even intelligence he could bring back. It would be worth it just to sell the salvaged materials for scrap, even if there was nothing truly valuable onboard. It would make a good story to tell too, which might get him laid. Spending most of his time alone with a droid in dodgy locations it was best he wasn’t remembered was certainly not a lifestyle conducive to a decent sex life. He had to take it where he could get it. It’s not like Smith was interested.A smuggler and his droid companion come across a Battleship in the void of Space, and on it they find more than they bargained for.Space AU, Eventual Hatsome. Rating and tags will be updated as new chapters are added.





	Of Those Who Walk Behind The Stars

“Tom is going to murder me,” Ross muttered, clattering around in the tool box. “They will literally be pulling my body out of the trash compactor within a day of us getting home.” He held up another socket wrench and compared it to the glowing image of the tool he needed on the screen. He tossed it to the side and kept rummaging. 

“Yeah, probably. He did just fix your chiller last week.” Smith drawled from where he lay, sprawled on the smooth polymer floor of the ship’s deck. The tiny mess Ross had crammed into a corner of the living quarters didn’t leave much room for him to work, especially with a droid taking up as much space as possible. Ross rubbed the back of his neck, knotted and sore from having to contort himself into the interstitial space where the chiller’s workings were hidden. Without much hope he tried another wrench, and was gratified when the bolt turned.

“Well he clearly didn’t do a very good job of it, did he? Now I have to drink warm piss-water.” 

“You shouldn’t put so much in it. It taxes the compressor. And it doesn’t have adequate ventilation.”  

The droid shifted, and the screen plugged into his neck slid a bit as it was dragged by the cable tethering it to Smith.

“I don’t see why you can’t fix it for me, seeing as you know how.”  

Ross frowned down at him, and tilted the screen so he could see the maintenance instructions for the ship’s refrigeration unit again. 

“Having the manual doesn’t mean I know how to fix it. My problem solving and critical thinking drivers aren’t good enough.” Smith draped an arm over his face, and made a very convincing sighing noise for someone who didn’t breathe. 

“Valict-shit,” Ross said under his breath.

“Sorry?”

“I  _ said _ -” Ross was cut off by the pinging of the ship’s proximity alarm. He made a rude gesture in Smith’s direction and lurched over to the ladder up to the cockpit.

In the distance through the view screen was the outline of a Coalition Battleship. Illuminated by the light from the nearest sun, it hung as a shining speck of metal in the vast black expanse. Their brisk clip took them closer to it, the jagged outlines of turrets and ports slowly growing larger in their view. Ross didn’t think they would hit it. Smith dropped into the copilot's seat, prodding at the sensors until the alarm stopped.

“It doesn’t seem to be moving, or at least not moving fast.” Ross checked their trajectory, and adjusted their path to take them closer to the larger ship. 

“Yeah, no shit.” Smith pointed, and Ross looked back up at the ship. Its sides were blackened, and now that they were closer Ross could see that a whole docking arm was missing from the starboard side. Black scorch marks from blaster cannons covered most of the exterior, and a gaping hole in the underbelly of the ship drifted debris into the vacuum.

“Fuck. What do you think happened?”

“You know we’re not even remotely close enough for me to try to get in touch with their on-board.” 

Ross watched as the droid opened the page after page of Coalition ship records, running what he could make out of the ID number half obscured under the black streaks. Smith settled back in the seat, swiveling a bit to prop his bare feet on the dash. 

“It wasn’t us was it?” Ross didn’t think it was. He didn’t think the Consortium had enough ships to take down an entire Coalition Battleship. But his intelligence clearance was very need to know.

“Doubt it.” 

“Kinda makes this whole thing even weirder. Why did they just abandon it out here?”

Smith didn’t answer, either because he didn’t know or knew and was being petulant because he still had grit stuck in his joints. Eyeing the dark metal exposed on Smith’s polyskin-free feet, Ross tried to and failed to see any signs of sand scour. 

He chewed his lip, flicking off the autonav and settling himself into the pilot’s seat. Automatically he fastened his safety harness, and carefully wrapped fingers around the joysticks, rubbing the worn grips as he considered.

There was bound to be a lot of tech on the Battleship, things he could use to update his own little skimmer. Weapons and munitions, and maybe even intelligence he could bring back. It would be worth it just to sell the salvaged materials for scrap, even if there was nothing truly valuable onboard. It would make a good story to tell too, which might get him laid. Spending most of his time alone with a droid in dodgy locations it was best he wasn’t remembered was certainly not a lifestyle conducive to a decent sex life. He had to take it where he could get it. It’s not like Smith was interested. 

Ross shook his head to dispel that dangerous train of thought, and nudged the steering. They turned, avoiding a large piece of the Battleship’s hull and mostly avoiding a human sized chunk of melted polymer. It thudded hollowly as it bumped the top of Ross’s ship. Smith shot him a look, which Ross ignored.

“We’re checking it out, there was fuckall in that damn desert and I’d rather this haul not be a total waste.” He swerved, stomach lurching a bit as he overcompensated to steer past a clump of wreckage. From below, heard a scrape and rattle as the toolbox slid across the floor and presumably into a wall.

“Do you want me to fly?” Smith said carefully, voice inflected in a perfect mimic of casual suggestion. Ross’s face burned, and he wondered how red he was. Smith’s infrared sensors probably told him all he needed to know about the relative embarrassment, red face or no.

“I’ve got it, okay? Aren’t your problem solving drivers in need of an update or something?”

“Yeah, yeah. Whatever. Just holler if you want me to dock you.” 

For all Smith looked very lifelike, his unnaturally still facial expression didn’t betray any hint of the sarcasm Ross could definitely hear. Ross wondered sometimes how that worked, if jokes were part of the standard personality programming for a Coalition intelligence droid, or if Smith had picked it up somewhere along the way.

“Always with the fucking docking, what is your obsession with it? Is it the dicks?” 

He stole a look at Smith’s holoscreen, image after image of nearly identical battleships still flicking past. Smith tapped his fingers against the control panel, drumming the beat from some melody Ross almost recognized. Maybe it had played in the bar last night. He’d have to ask Smith to play it later. 

Another piece of wreckage slammed into the view screen, and Ross jumped. Reflexively he jerked the ship to the side, and Smith had to throw out a hand to stop himself from falling out of the copilots seat.

“Ross!” Smith yelled, scrambling for the harness he should have been wearing.

“Stop shouting, I’m flying!” Ross yelled back. 

The light in his periphery was maddening, but he had to focus on getting his ship to the Battleship, and docked. Knuckles white, he tried to make the minute adjustments that would take the ship in line with the remaining docking arm he was heading for. It was tricky enough when he had the receiving ship’s sensors to compensate for any mistakes he might make. He felt a drop of sweat roll from his armpit down his side. 

As Ross closed in on the Battleship, its size was more apparent. The stark hull filled the entire viewscreen, the window ports dotting the exterior of the giant ship unlit pockmarks in its sides.

Ross held his breath, pulling back on his joysticks to slow the ship down to near immobility. He coasted up to the airlock he was headed for, only scraping the side a little bit. Smith activated their own docking apparatus and the ship groaned, shaking as the robotic arms lined them up with the door into the battleship.

With a sigh Ross relaxed, letting out the held breath. His fingers ached as he let go and he flexed them to relieve the stiffness caused by gripping the joysticks far harder than necessary. 

“See, I can fly just fine. You were worried for nothing.” Smith released his harness, and tapped his keyboard to project the file he’d pulled up onto the holoscreen by Ross. 

Ross released his own safety harness, leaning forward to read the display. Smith had assuredly already read it, but Ross said it out loud anyway.

“Commissioned in 10097, Captain Kelbern appointed five years ago. Crew of 6448. Destroyed, unrecoverable. No survivors. Cause of destruction: Navigation error.” Ross paused, looking away from the screen to Smith. Smith passed him a spare charge pack for his blaster wordlessly, and vanished down the ladder. Ross sighed.

“Doesn’t look like a fucking navigation error to me, unless they accidentally navigated into a shootout.” Ross called down to Smith. A locker door slammed, and Smith reappeared, tossing an armored vest at Ross’s chair. 

Reluctantly Ross slid out of the pilot’s seat, stooping to pick up the heavy vest.

He swung the vest around his shoulders, the stiffness of the restricting material pressed into his sides through the thin material of his undershirt. Putting on his jacket over the protective vest, he paused for a moment. He wondered if he should take more weapons than the blaster and knife he always wore, or if that would make any encounter they might risk worse. As he considered, Ross touched the blaster at his hip, and the knife at his back in habitual sequence. The ridges of the vest chafed as he moves, familiar in their vague discomfort. The feeling called up memories Ross hastened to push aside.

“I’m going to see if I can talk to it, some of the sensors have to be awake still,” Smith said, leaning over to reach the main control panel for Ross’s ship. He powered down all but the essential functions, bluish white emergency lights flickering on as the main fixtures went dark.  

“Do you think there might be trouble? The record said no survivors.” 

“Why would the Coalition lie about what happened to six thousand marines if there wasn’t some sort of trouble?” The droid looked him over. 

Expression not betraying a hint of emotion, or motive, he reached to Ross’s chest. He briskly tightened one of the straps on Ross’s vest, close enough Ross could hear the slight metallic whisper of Smith’s locomotion mechanisms through the gaps in the polyskin.

Ross willed himself to not stare at the droid’s face, softly illuminated by the glow of the emergency lighting, and so close to his own. Instead he stared up at the crack in the ceiling, partially filled with repair foam that probably needed reapplication, and tried to keep his mind blank and breathing even. There were infinite reasons why he shouldn’t allow himself this obsession with a droid,  _ his _ droid, but his body and mind still seemed intent on betraying him. 

Smith patted the strap he’d adjusted and stepped away. Ross sucked in a breath, and tried not to shudder. 

He  _ really _ needed to get laid.

“Are you done fussing? We should get going before they send us a welcoming crew, if there really is anyone left on board.” Ross readjusted his belt, and repeated the touch to the blaster and then his knife. Smith extended a hand towards Ross with a jerk up, middle two fingers extended. 

Ross opened his mouth to return the rude gesture with a verbal retort, but the gesture shifted, and Smith bent his hand back further than it ought to if he’d been human. He pressed a thumb against the exposed mechanisms in his wrist, and the data link clicked out. Ross looked away, and punched in the code to unlock their airlock. The bar of lights at the top of the keypad flashed twice, and in the quiet left by the dead engines, he heard the locks slide back with a hollow clunk.

“Ready?” Ross didn’t wait for an answer, punching the button to release the lock. He hauled the ship’s bay doors open, air rushing into the small space between the vessels as the pressure equilibrated into the vacuum. 

Smith stepped past him, jabbing the access panel on the exterior of the Battleship with a finger. No lights came on behind the glassy pane, and Smith quickly shoved the the link into the port beneath the screen. His face froze, unseeing optics locking on what lay before him. In the near silence, Ross strained, trying to hear if there was noise coming from the Battleship over the sound of the blood rushing in his ears. He couldn't hear anything. The Battleship’s engines were long since dead, leaving nothing but the endless silence of space. 

Smith shivered, at the same time the black door on the battleship slid open. He spoke in a stilted voice, hollow and much more feminine than the one Smith usually used.

“System Downtime: 4.5103 Standard Days; Engines: 0%; Shields: 0%; Monitor Reserve Battery: 95.6%; Internal temperature: 278K; Atmospheric Pressure: 960 hPa;  Atmosphic Composition: 75% Nitrogen, 20% Oxygen, <1% Argon, 5% Unknown; Occupancy: Unknown.” Smith shook again, joints clicking as his own programming reconnected to his body. 

“That’s all she had in the backup data I could access from here.” Smith collapsed the telescoping rod of the data link, and it vanished back into the mechanisms in his wrist.

“Occupancy unknown,” Ross muttered, hand resting on his blaster. He reached for the red lever that would manually release the door into the ship. 

“Don’t you think you should be more worried about what that unknown in the air is?” Smith’s hand caught his wrist, the droid’s face managing a very convincing expression of reproach. “Your organic body might be poisoned.” 

Rather than argue through the shame that he hadn’t even realized there was something off about the ship’s atmosphere, Ross retreated back into his ship’s hold. The storage lockers on the walls and beneath the bunks held a vast array of equipment that Ross found use of as his missions took him into a dizzying array of situations. It took him several tries to find the locker with the ventilator masks.

“Fucking Coalition Battleship. Sure Ross, just a brief detour! Why not! I’m sure this will be  _ totally _ worth it,” Ross berated himself under his breath as he fitted the mask over his face. 

He hated how the sides blocked his peripheral vision. The distractions only got worse as he switched it on, cool flow of filtered air hitting the sweat on his face and greenish icons and text informing him that he had in fact remembered to recharge the unit after his last foray into an inhospitable atmosphere.

“Ready?” the more mechanical voice Smith had when he used the internal communications channel crackled through the ventilator mask’s headset. Ross shut the door to his ship behind him, wondering if locking up behind them meant he was paranoid. 

“You know I hate it when you use the internal comms.” Ross frowned at Smith. “You don’t sound right.”

Smith laughed, tinny and coarse in the headset speakers, and hauled down the lever to activate the external door on the Battleship. 

Together they stepped into the darkened airlock even before the door fully opened, the headlamp coming on automatically on Ross’s mask. He impatiently pushed the button to close the external door as it slowly reversed direction and irised closed. They repeated the process on the other door, and the bowels of the Battleship was exposed.

Before them was a dim hallway, illuminated only by Ross’s light and the emergency strip lighting along the corners of the floor and center of the ceiling. The corridor was wide enough for a half dozen humans to walk abreast, and was lined with airlocks identical to the one Ross and Smith entered through. In typical Coalition fashion, the walls were a uniform white expanse, contrasting only slightly with the grey floor in the gloom. Military issue blast resistant polymer was stark, at least compared to the chaotic displays and detritus in Ross’s own ship. The straight corridor continued on, seemingly to the vanishing point. Devoid of any signs of life. 

“Interior decoration leaves something to be desired,” Ross voiced the thought aloud.

“I think it has a certain  _ je ne sais quoi. _ ” Smith paced to the port on the opposite side of the corridor, finger running over a score mark in the wall. Ross paused for a moment, a barbed comment about nostalgia flickering for a moment in his mind before he snuffed it out.

Back to the task at hand, Ross opened one of the pockets on his belt, and took out a sticky light. He smacked the disk to the floor, and it flickered to brilliance as the suction activated. Satisfied that he could now identify the port his ship lay behind, Ross headed down the hall towards the bulk of the ship that had shadowed their approach. He set a brisk pace, not wanting to waste time and knowing that Smith would be able to easily keep up no matter how fast he walked. Ears filled only with the sound of his own breathing, loud through the mask fitted over his face, Ross’s mind drifted.

Despite the endless appearance of the hall, it didn’t take long for them to reach an intersection where the central hall of the docking arm joined onto the main ship. Ross turned the corner first and stumbled immediately. Catching himself against the wall, he turned to see what had made him trip. He swallowed, staring for a long moment at the corpse of a Coalition soldier that lay on the floor in front of Smith’s feet.   

Ross had seen more dead bodies than he could count. It had been almost guaranteed that they would come across dead soldiers on the ship, but Ross still found himself surprised. The blueish green color of the human’s skin, coupled with the splotchy stains around her mouth and eyes made his traitorous stomach turn. One of the soldier’s swollen and discolored hands lay by the wall, as if in the moments before unconsciousness and death she had been attempting to activate one of the emergency air locks that separated the hallways into sections. Ross was thankful that the ventilation mask filtered out most smells, since the soldier’s grey jumpsuit was stained with urine or feces. Or both. 

Ross forced himself to look away. 

He took Smith by the arm, half to urge the droid into motion, and half for his own reassurance. Smith didn’t shrug off his hand even though Ross held on a bit longer than necessary to shuffle the droid around the body. Fingers tight on the slightly pliant and cool polyskin, tighter than would be comfortable for an organic, Ross clung to something like sanity. Smith didn’t complain. 

Smith took the lead, gently touching Ross’s shoulder as he passed. 

“Keep moving.”  

The droid navigated them through the seemingly endless maze of identical corridors, his assurance brought on by some internal knowledge of this ship design. Ross didn’t ask if it was because he had been on one of these ships before, or because he’d downloaded something from the Coalition databases he’d been browsing on the ship. Smith’s past was no secret to him, but he still didn’t like to think about the things a Coalition droid would have done, and the places Smith would have been. It made him think too much about his own past.

The hallway they followed now was dotted with windows that gazed out to the stars. The starlight from this system’s sun illuminated the hallway, casting shadowy bars across the floor. Smith’s own shadow merged and separated from the static lines as Ross kept his measured distance behind the droid. Smith would know where to take them. 

The second corpse was less surprising, but Ross’s step still stuttered just enough that Smith turned back to give him an inscrutable look. Like the last, this soldier’s skin was blued, eyes unseeing darkened by burst blood vessels. As Ross passed, he looked for any sign of a fight, or injury that could have lead to the deaths. Finding none, he hurried on. 

“Where are we heading?” Ross asked, as they turned off the outer corridor and onto another interior one.

“Bridge.” 

Ross nodded, though Smith couldn’t see. 

This hallway was broader, dotted with doorways and smaller corridors branching off. A cluster of soldiers had fallen as a group that spilled out of a mess hall, and from there the number of bodies only intensified. Wordlessly, Ross and Smith avoided them, though Ross noted distantly the officers, surrounded by soldiers of low rank. Now the bodies had blasters in hand, and through the bloat some looked to have been injured before death. Dark stains streaked through tears in the grey uniforms, running onto the featureless flooring. 

Ross could have taken some of the weapons, munitions always fetched a good price. But it was early yet, and it was useless to try to carry something he would in all likelihood have to put down.  

Despite the drawn out quality that time had taken on, the double doors wedged ajar by corpses still felt as if it had come up too soon for a ship as large as the Battleship was. The plate above the door told him they had in fact reached the bridge, and not just another mess.

Unlike the other doors they’d passed, the bridge bore the captain’s personal insignia inside the three interlocked circles the Coalition emblazoned on all it touched. The etched design showed an organic Ross didn’t recognize- long tail and six limbs that ended in flared claws. Its hands held up a representation of a star system also unfamiliar to Ross. 

Ross drew his blaster, and headed towards the door’s access panel. Standardization was a boon for him, and he recognized the layout of the door’s controls from many smaller Coalition ships he’d scavenged. 

“Ready?” He glanced over at Smith, crouched by the bodies and oculus flickering as he inspected the corpses. His finger traced the concentric circles of an officer’s rank insignia inside the Coalition star on his sleeve. Ross suppressed a shudder to see Smith touching the corpse so casually. He took a breath, squared his shoulders and punched the large button at the bottom of the control panel. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In a society completely saturated with Star Wars, I've been thinking a lot about space but wanted to play with a story not Star Wars, or another pre-existing Scfi story.
> 
> And so this was born. A piece of something that I've had in my drafts for quite some time, it remains unfinished (as of yet) but hopefully I will get around to moving this along and writing all the good shit I've got planned.
> 
> Title is borrowed from Clive Barker
> 
> EDIT: I guess AO3 goofed and posted this twice! WHOOPS. *shakes fist at AO3 Errors*


End file.
